Paleoecology, Climate Change, and Conservation

Paleoecology is a discipline that looks at the past to understand how ecosystems have responded to long-term variations in climate, natural disturbances, and human activity.  While history is fascinating in its own right, the discipline today faces a serious challenge: Is paleoecology still relevant for understanding a rapidly changing future? Dr. Whitlock will draw on her research in Yellowstone and comparable ecosystems around the world to discuss major changes in vegetation and fire regimes during the Holocene.   This long-term perspective helps define baseline conditions for biosphere assessments and conservation strategies, by providing a better understanding of natural variability and a platform for communicating the impacts of current climate change to the public and decision makers.

DR. CATHY WHITLOCK is a Regents Professor Emerita of Earth Sciences at Montana State University and a Fellow of the Montana Institute on Ecosystems.  Her research interests focus on long-term climate and environmental change, and she has spent the last 40 years studying the ecological history of the northern Rockies as well as comparable large landscapes in New Zealand, Tasmania, Europe, and Patagonia.  Dr. Whitlock has co-authored over 225 scientific publications and trained over 40 graduate students and post-docs in her field.  She is also the lead author of regional climate assessments that explain the consequences of climate change in Montana and Greater Yellowstone.  Dr. Whitlock is a fellow of GSA, AGU, and AAAS and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.  She was awarded the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award (2014), the AWG Professional Excellence Award (2015),  the AMQUA Distinguished Career Award (2017), and the A. Starker Leopold Award from Yellowstone National Park (2022).